How Would The Environment Fare If It Was Unprotected?
Many of us in the U. S. and in other post-modern societies subscribe to the prejudice that the use by humans (especially modern technologically-adept humans) always has a negative impact on Nature. For this reason we have invented something called “environmentalism,” along with a body of laws, rules, regulations, interest groups, a servile media and education system, taboos, fads, fashions, movies, books etc., to protect Nature from us. The assumption upon which all of the above is based is that the more we protect things from us, the more they will return to “balance” or a state we call “pristine” and the better off we will all be. This is true, we are told, even though our standard of living may be diminished drastically. We will be better off, we are told, because we won’t keep making things worse until we destroy the planet, or end life as we know it, or all become cannibals, or whatever image some liberal Chicken Little du jour uses to convince us that we are doomed unless we follow Big Green.
One writer whom I have met and who reviewed my first book (Alan Weisman) has even written a book named The World Without Us. It is described as a “penetrating, page-turning, tour of a post-human Earth.” Actually, there are already a number of places here on planet Earth that show us what a “post-human Earth” would be. With that in mind I offer the photos that accompany this post as illustrations after the fact for Alan’s book or for a sequel called The World Without Environmentalists.
The photo sequence below shows an exclosure in central Arizona, the Drake Exclosure, which was set aside in 1946 to study what a “World Without Us” would look like. The top photo shows the exclosure in 2004 after 58 years of the remedy contemporary liberal environmentalism tells us will restore nature to health, diversity, and balance. The second photo (below the first) shows what the land outside the exclosure, which has continued to be grazed by a local rancher’s cattle and used by humans for firewood cutting, off-road vehicle recreation, hunting, etc, looked like that same year. The third photo was taken on the same day as photo #2 from a point inside the exclosure looking out. Notice which way the elk tracks are headed.
Is this piece of the Earth better off without humans or without environmentalists?
OTHER EXAMPLES OF A WORLD WITHOUT US
(AND OF THE NEGATIVE IMPACTS OF BIG GREEN)
DESERTIFICATION On Wupatki National Monument, adjacent to former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt’s family’s ranch in Northern Arizona, the amount of bare dirt (soil without plants on it) has more than doubled in 13 years of preservation or “World Without Us” management). In contrast, four trials of using cattle to encourage plant growth on a study plot on the Babbitt Ranch monitored by EcoResults (a not-for-profit I helped found) increased plant cover by native grasses by an average of 20% per trial.
ENDANGERED SPECIES A ranch along the Gila River in New Mexico hosts one of the largest known populations of an endangered bird—the southwestern willow flycatcher. Two adjacent preserves, examples of “The World Without Us,” host none of those birds.
NATIVE PLANTS On a preserve near Santa Barbara, California, where I live today, exclosures have been constructed to protect areas of native grasses from human impact on the theory that the current invasion of California grasslands by plants from other continents is caused by the damage done to those habitats by more than a century of human use. After 15 or so years of post-human management the exclosures have proven more hospitable to the invaders than the natives. The protected areas have become almost pure stands of invaders, while outside the fence, where the land continues to be grazed, and thus be used by humans, there are healthy stands of natives grasses right up to the fence.
VERNAL POOLS In Central California, when cattle grazing was removed from seasonal wetlands called vernal pools, Nature Conservancy scientists found that post-human management made these concentrations of native diversity and endangered species vulnerable to invasion by nonnative plants. This invasion caused some of these seasonal wetlands to dry up before the rare plants and animals that inhabit them could spring to life and reproduce. In as few as 3 years of “protection” these areas, which have been called one of the highest concentrations of rare and endangered species on Earth, have literally disappeared.
To their credit a number of mainstream environmental groups, including The Nature Conservancy, Audubon, Defenders of Wildlife, and more have recognized this situation and have facilitated the return of grazing to these unique areas. Still, the other situations I described above, and plenty more like them, have experienced no such progress.
My experience and my examples come mainly from ranching and rangeland management in the American West, but the phenomenon I am describing occurs in other types of habitat with other kinds of management, too.
HAWAII On the Hawaiian island of Kauai farming was removed from the Hanalei Valley to benefit native birds. When bird populations began to suffer, farming was restored, and the birds came back.
INDIA In Cattle and Conservation at Bharatpur: A Case Study in Science and Advocacy, Michael Lewis describes a situation in Bharatpur, India, in which the grazing animals belonging to surrounding villagers were removed from an area of wetlands that had been created as a hunting reserve for the local maharaja and recently converted into a park. Nine villagers were shot to death achieve this removal. Since the villagers and their livestock were forcibly removed, the marshes, ponds, and canals have become clogged with plants the cattle used to eat. As a result bird numbers have begun to drop as has the tiger population, which used to be one of the most dense in the world. As of 2003, the Indian Government was struggling to deal with this apparent anomaly in environmental theory: Removing the impacts of humans is not supposed to cause parks to deteriorate.
In all of these examples, and plenty more, the remedy mainstream liberal environmentalism or big green has identified as the only way to deal with our environmental problems—reducing human impact—has failed to achieve its goal. It has failed to save endangered species, improve habitat, and encourage the survival of native plant species. In every case I have listed it did the exact opposite of what it set out to do: it exterminated the endangered species it intended to protect, destroyed the habitat it was intended to restore, made areas more, rather than less, susceptible to invasion by nonnatives, and hastened the desertification of land it was supposed to preserve.
LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM IS BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT There are plenty of sources who say environmentalism is asking for too much, is too expensive, puts animals before humans, is wreaking havoc on our economy, is a religion, etc., but few if any are saying what you have just read: that contemporary liberal environmentalism and its cure for everything environmental—reducing the impact of humans—is bad for the environment.
The irony of what you will read in the Rightway2BGreen is that it doesn't call those of us who are concerned about the environment "wackos", it makes the case that we need to swap Big Green for a conservative environmentalism that judges the worth of an action on its results rather than on how well it fits a liberal, anti-capitalist, misanthropic agenda.
Many of us in the U. S. and in other post-modern societies subscribe to the prejudice that the use by humans (especially modern technologically-adept humans) always has a negative impact on Nature. For this reason we have invented something called “environmentalism,” along with a body of laws, rules, regulations, interest groups, a servile media and education system, taboos, fads, fashions, movies, books etc., to protect Nature from us. The assumption upon which all of the above is based is that the more we protect things from us, the more they will return to “balance” or a state we call “pristine” and the better off we will all be. This is true, we are told, even though our standard of living may be diminished drastically. We will be better off, we are told, because we won’t keep making things worse until we destroy the planet, or end life as we know it, or all become cannibals, or whatever image some liberal Chicken Little du jour uses to convince us that we are doomed unless we follow Big Green.
One writer whom I have met and who reviewed my first book (Alan Weisman) has even written a book named The World Without Us. It is described as a “penetrating, page-turning, tour of a post-human Earth.” Actually, there are already a number of places here on planet Earth that show us what a “post-human Earth” would be. With that in mind I offer the photos that accompany this post as illustrations after the fact for Alan’s book or for a sequel called The World Without Environmentalists.
The photo sequence below shows an exclosure in central Arizona, the Drake Exclosure, which was set aside in 1946 to study what a “World Without Us” would look like. The top photo shows the exclosure in 2004 after 58 years of the remedy contemporary liberal environmentalism tells us will restore nature to health, diversity, and balance. The second photo (below the first) shows what the land outside the exclosure, which has continued to be grazed by a local rancher’s cattle and used by humans for firewood cutting, off-road vehicle recreation, hunting, etc, looked like that same year. The third photo was taken on the same day as photo #2 from a point inside the exclosure looking out. Notice which way the elk tracks are headed.
Is this piece of the Earth better off without humans or without environmentalists?
OTHER EXAMPLES OF A WORLD WITHOUT US
(AND OF THE NEGATIVE IMPACTS OF BIG GREEN)
DESERTIFICATION On Wupatki National Monument, adjacent to former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt’s family’s ranch in Northern Arizona, the amount of bare dirt (soil without plants on it) has more than doubled in 13 years of preservation or “World Without Us” management). In contrast, four trials of using cattle to encourage plant growth on a study plot on the Babbitt Ranch monitored by EcoResults (a not-for-profit I helped found) increased plant cover by native grasses by an average of 20% per trial.
ENDANGERED SPECIES A ranch along the Gila River in New Mexico hosts one of the largest known populations of an endangered bird—the southwestern willow flycatcher. Two adjacent preserves, examples of “The World Without Us,” host none of those birds.
NATIVE PLANTS On a preserve near Santa Barbara, California, where I live today, exclosures have been constructed to protect areas of native grasses from human impact on the theory that the current invasion of California grasslands by plants from other continents is caused by the damage done to those habitats by more than a century of human use. After 15 or so years of post-human management the exclosures have proven more hospitable to the invaders than the natives. The protected areas have become almost pure stands of invaders, while outside the fence, where the land continues to be grazed, and thus be used by humans, there are healthy stands of natives grasses right up to the fence.
VERNAL POOLS In Central California, when cattle grazing was removed from seasonal wetlands called vernal pools, Nature Conservancy scientists found that post-human management made these concentrations of native diversity and endangered species vulnerable to invasion by nonnative plants. This invasion caused some of these seasonal wetlands to dry up before the rare plants and animals that inhabit them could spring to life and reproduce. In as few as 3 years of “protection” these areas, which have been called one of the highest concentrations of rare and endangered species on Earth, have literally disappeared.
To their credit a number of mainstream environmental groups, including The Nature Conservancy, Audubon, Defenders of Wildlife, and more have recognized this situation and have facilitated the return of grazing to these unique areas. Still, the other situations I described above, and plenty more like them, have experienced no such progress.
My experience and my examples come mainly from ranching and rangeland management in the American West, but the phenomenon I am describing occurs in other types of habitat with other kinds of management, too.
HAWAII On the Hawaiian island of Kauai farming was removed from the Hanalei Valley to benefit native birds. When bird populations began to suffer, farming was restored, and the birds came back.
INDIA In Cattle and Conservation at Bharatpur: A Case Study in Science and Advocacy, Michael Lewis describes a situation in Bharatpur, India, in which the grazing animals belonging to surrounding villagers were removed from an area of wetlands that had been created as a hunting reserve for the local maharaja and recently converted into a park. Nine villagers were shot to death achieve this removal. Since the villagers and their livestock were forcibly removed, the marshes, ponds, and canals have become clogged with plants the cattle used to eat. As a result bird numbers have begun to drop as has the tiger population, which used to be one of the most dense in the world. As of 2003, the Indian Government was struggling to deal with this apparent anomaly in environmental theory: Removing the impacts of humans is not supposed to cause parks to deteriorate.
In all of these examples, and plenty more, the remedy mainstream liberal environmentalism or big green has identified as the only way to deal with our environmental problems—reducing human impact—has failed to achieve its goal. It has failed to save endangered species, improve habitat, and encourage the survival of native plant species. In every case I have listed it did the exact opposite of what it set out to do: it exterminated the endangered species it intended to protect, destroyed the habitat it was intended to restore, made areas more, rather than less, susceptible to invasion by nonnatives, and hastened the desertification of land it was supposed to preserve.
LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM IS BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT There are plenty of sources who say environmentalism is asking for too much, is too expensive, puts animals before humans, is wreaking havoc on our economy, is a religion, etc., but few if any are saying what you have just read: that contemporary liberal environmentalism and its cure for everything environmental—reducing the impact of humans—is bad for the environment.
The irony of what you will read in the Rightway2BGreen is that it doesn't call those of us who are concerned about the environment "wackos", it makes the case that we need to swap Big Green for a conservative environmentalism that judges the worth of an action on its results rather than on how well it fits a liberal, anti-capitalist, misanthropic agenda.
1 comment:
Could you provide citations of the studies you cite? You replicate the same flaw of Weisman's book - anecdotal evidence without citation to data for evaluation.
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